Home ed Journal entry - last few weeks

As usual we have been so busy over the last few weeks and with the onset of spring there has been so much more to fit in. This is a quick update of some of the things that have been taking up our time.

We have been out and about on a few nature walks in our local nature reserve and on the local marshes, monitoring and looking at the kinds of wildlife that is around in early spring. We visited the nature reserve on a lovely sunny afternoon but decided to go to the marshes extremely early on a very frosty morning and were rewarded with a sighting of a white egret, although photos proved much more difficult.

The children have been enjoying cooking as usual, and have carried on making many things after the success of the Chinese dumplings for Chinese new year. It's lovely to make these as a family every year, they taste amazing.

Chocolate Easter nests are usually a very simple, favourite every year, ideal for young children to make and enjoy.

We have also been looking at life on the home front during the war and have been considering a dig for victory theme for our allotment this year. In the meantime, as I have several wartime ration and victory cookery books, which have been fascinating, I have been trying out the recipes. This week we cooked an old favourite of my grandmothers... Rock cakes!

These were recommended during the war by the Ministry of food because of the minimal amounts of sugar and eggs in the recipe. I must admit to avoiding these as a child if I could but they were definitely really tasty, I obviously didn't know what I missing and the children loved them too.

My husband and daughter have also been rescuing and renovating a wartime dressing table with the most fabulous mirror if you would like to take a look.

The children have been really fascinated with science as usual and we have been continuing with the Mystery science courses and some of the of the shelf science packs. They have been studying different forms of energy and plant science mostly due to the fact that spring has arrived and our growing experiments and activities have been taking off.

We have made a root viewer, so that we can study roots closely and also if we turn the viewer every few days the directional change of the roots can easily be seen.

We made some grass heads... we have made these before when the children were very small but we wanted to make them again to try out some of the theories on the science course.

The quest this time was to get the hair to grow in the direction of your choice. My daughter wanted her grass hair to grow upwards and my son wanted his to grow straight out the back, so I think that worked well.

After our experiment finished we thought it may be a good idea to hide the grass heads in the garden so that they could continue growing and add a little extra magical interest. We are hoping it may look like a little troll head popping up out of the ground, my daughter added ribbons to her head first.

As for me I have increased my cacti and succulent collection over the winter season by about sixty new young plants so I have been really busy as most of these, and some of my larger ones have needed re potting as the spring arrived.

Snakes for Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is on the 10th of February this year and it is the year of the snake, the children were very keen to make some snakes to celebrate. We have decided to make them with a few recycled and natural things we had around the house.

Old wine corks and left over pine cones are perfect for threading opportunities for young children and for the bodies of our snakes. We threaded five corks onto a length of string and knotted each end leaving a small gap between each cork so the snake could slither.

The tail segment was shaped by my husband and was attached to the row of corks by pushing the knot into the hole and sealing it there with a hot glue gun.

Red and gold are lucky colours in China, so the New Year snakes were painted using these colours mostly. The pine cones are going to be used as the head of the snake and have been sprayed with gold paint.

As you can see my husband has also drilled a small hole in the bottom of the pine cone (handy to put the stick in for ease of spraying) it is just a few millimeters deep so the knot can be glued and pushed inside to disguise it.

 Eyes and a forked tongue have been added to each snake ready to be attached to the cork body when the paint is dry.

Here are the finished snakes, I think they are really quite cute and they have a very snake like slither movement...The children are very pleased with their work and didn't stop there, deciding to add some gold sequins.

If you don't have the corks available it is possible to make a snake with small branch pieces my husband made this one a couple of years ago, and it is very sturdy and still being played with.

All ready to bring in the year of the snake....Happy New Year China.

A look at February

Well, we started the month with learning about Imbolc, Chinese new year and Valentines day and the children enjoyed making many related crafts... we were very, very busy! So for the last week or so we have been having a more relaxed time. There has still been many crafts but of a more free style, sort of a raid the craft box and glue it all on paper style.

Since we made the 'bristlebot', a small robot, last year my son has been quite interested in electronics so we got a starter kit for him and he has been learning all about circuits.

The above photograph is of some parts of the starter electronics set that my husband has been helping him with, we will probably buy a more advanced set soon as he has been enjoying it a lot. My husband wrote about the electronics in greater detail if you would like to read further here.

There has also been much gardening, my husband made some new raised beds for vegetable planting and the children were very much involved in this. They helped with digging and planting and of course the bug hunting and the excavation for treasure! My husband has also written about making raised beds in further detail if you would like to make some yourself, totally from recycled materials.

We have been on some nature walks, looking at the bare trees and for the first signs of spring, using a guide for identifying trees from their bare twigs and buds which has been very informative. I found some vintage books for sale for £1.50 by Enid Blyton and we have been reading them together to while away the winter evenings... I found the language used in these adorable and old fashioned and the children love them very much.

You may remember from previous posts that I was putting together small crafts to make a Valentines day card for my husband, I made a woven heart and some paper quilled hearts then assembled them as you can see in the photograph below, don't worry it is a close up to spare you the details.

And that was February! 

Chinese new year and review

We have had so much fun learning about the Chinese new year celebrations, we have done many craft projects, some of them have been featured in previous posts. We have also located China on our globe and looked up it's flag, as part of our China project we have looked at traditional lion dancing, some of the history through stories and studied the well known story of how the new year animals came to be. We have also looked at some man made features and some of the geological features of the country, naturally, as there are many dinosaurs dug up there!

We didn't stop there though, the children are always very excited to learn new things, so my son tried out some Chinese writing, they both learned how to say 'happy new year' in Chinese and the chorus of a Chinese new year song. Which my 2 year old daughter has been singing constantly! We had a home cooked Chinese meal to celebrate with fortune cookies and of course they had the red envelopes that we made and filled with 8 coins each for luck.

The little gifts you can see in the above photograph were from my eldest daughter, who not only managed to find Chinese gifts, she also found some Chinese coins for the children to see close up. They had such a good time and learned so much they are now wondering what the next celebration is and which country we will be studying next. I'll have to get thinking on that one!

As for me, well I have been trying to crochet these mittens for my daughter... trying being the appropriate word, she has lost hers and as it is still a little cold so she will need some for about another month. I decided to crochet the mittens as it looked easier than knitting them, the thumbs had me confused every time! I know they are not perfect or even close to looking like the pattern but they will do for a month and she loves them. When it gets warmer I'm going to pull them out and try again with a simpler pattern for next winter. It's all good practice isn't it?... and I obviously need lots of practice!

Goldfish kites for Chinese new year

This is our third craft so far for Chinese new year which is on February 3rd, the children have been having so much fun preparing for all the festivities, and have learned so much in the process. I think this craft was their favourite and caused many delighted squeals as they played with their creations.

We decided to make a goldfish kite, goldfish are considered very fortunate in China especially at the new year and signify abundance. This is another very simple kids craft and we have used a inner tube from a kitchen or toilet roll as the base for our goldfish and covered it in orange crepe paper. We then attached 2 fin shapes to the side with a glue stick and many long strips of crepe and tissue paper to one end to represent the tail.

As you can see from the above photograph the design is pretty self explanatory, little googly eyes were added to make it more fish like. Initially we intended to draw on scales but the crepe paper had an interesting texture so we decided to leave the goldfish as it was.

After the glue was dry, string was attached to the front of the goldfish, which was then attached to a stick or a piece of dowel if you prefer. This allows the goldfish to fly out behind the child as they run about, it has an effect a bit like a wind sock. The children also loved twirling them around above their heads in large circles, as I said earlier this has been by far their favourite craft and it gave them hours of fun.

 These are the 2 goldfish kites hanging up for a rest at the end of the day, just waiting for tomorrow. Our cat thought this was a cool craft too, he was fascinated by the tails as they whizzed past him.

Chinese New Year - Red Envelopes

Another craft in early preparation of the coming Chinese new year on February 3rd, this time we have made the lucky red envelopes (Hong Bao) that are usually given to children for the new year celebrations filled with a lucky amount of coins. There are many beautiful examples of these envelopes, but in the interest of crafting with small children I have kept this simple.

The above photograph shows the small red envelopes in various stages of being cut out, folded and glued, a very simple packet shape. Next I printed off some  Chinese words for my son to practise writing, we chose the word Fu which means luck.

Now I would like to point out that we do not normally speak or write Chinese so if our writing is incorrect or says something offensive I would like to apologise in advance as we only intend to learn something of the celebration and the culture. I'm sure my husbands parents will inform me, if this is not correctly written as they both speak and write Chinese very well.

These are the finished envelopes, we had some trouble getting the writing to show up using a metallic pen, gold paint would be more ideal, so we have used a glue pen and gold glitter. Closer to the New year these will be filled with a lucky amount of coins, probably 8, and given to the children.

Chinese New Year Lanterns

Chinese new year of the rabbit starts on February 3rd, we are planning more than one craft and hoping to learn more about the Chinese celebration so we are getting an early start again. This first craft activity is aimed at very small children, it is a very simple craft and I'm hoping to get my kids glitter lust out of the way.

Every one has made these lanterns before but I'll briefly explain as I go along in case you have forgotten. First fold your A4 sheet of red paper in half length ways and cut strips almost to the edge as seen above. open out and let the kids go to town decorating, I tried to get them to keep to red and gold mostly to keep the lantern looking Chinese. We glued tissue paper strips along one edge to act as like tails and rolled the paper up, stapled the edges together and also attached the handle.

This is the finished lantern, the children made one each and they are now hanging up on the door as a decoration for the new year celebration.

Of course they had to spend some time running around with the lanterns flying behind them like kites so I am lucky they are still in one piece.

                                                 Happy New Year China for February 3rd